


Personalia

by Grinagog



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Demon Summoning, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Explicit Language, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Isekai, Multi, Video Game Mechanics, but i think it'll be fun, okay so i am absolutely taking liberties with 5e
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23509384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grinagog/pseuds/Grinagog
Summary: Zenith hasn't been in this world for long, but she's already filled up her bullshit-o-meter. A crappy tutorial that only kind of explains what she's doing here, an unconscious demon, and an inventory full of calligraphy supplies aren't going to help her here.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	1. Tutorial

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i have been reading so many isekai and video game mechanics stories lately. that shit is my jam. i love it. but i haven't found the story i want to read, so i decided to write it.

> Congratulations Zenith! You have successfully integrated onto Dirt through the System Populator And Wanderer's Nexus. Would you like to complete the Tutorial now?

Yes | No

"What the actual fuck is this shit?" Zenith said, staring blankly at the small blue screen. She looked around. There was sand, a lot of sand, and sunshine, a lot of sunshine. It wasn't quite noon, but it was close and it was hot. It was hot as fuck.

'This,' she thought, 'is not my bedroom.'

A few deep breaths later and she decided to push the yes button, because frankly she wanted to know what this shit was, what the fuck had happened to her, and why she can't remember her name. Since this thing had named her Zenith, it had to have some answers for her. At the very least, the tutorial should explain why the fuck there was a tutorial in the first place. Right? Right.

She lifted her hand to try to push the yes button and got immediately distracted by the sight of her hand. Last time she'd checked, she'd been pasty as spilled milk and covered in freckles. The hand that she raised was a graphite grey, no freckles in sight, with long fingers and pale white nails. She tried to look closer, but the screen kept getting in the way. She angrily swiped at it and startled at its texture. It was like a Newtonian fluid, just firm enough to touch with enough pressure, but still decidedly not a solid when a light, pulling touch was used. 

"What the fuck?" she muttered. She gave up on examining her hands and tried to push yes again. It did nothing. She tried pushing the button again with the same result. "Let me push the stupid yes button already!"

Ding!

> You've accepted the Quest: **Complete the Tutorial**.
> 
> Rewards: 10 XP

'What the hell?' Zenith thought as the banner announcing her new quest blinked out of existence as soon as she'd finished reading it.

> Welcome to Dirt, Zenith and thank you for selecting to view the Tutorial! You have been randomly selected to populate this world. Using a random character generator, the S.P.A.W.N. has generated your new body and abilities to best utilize your potential. The S.P.A.W.N. is heavily reliant on probability and chance. As such, you will need to become familiar with the following notations when reading about your new body and abilities: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20.
> 
> "d" in these instances denotes "dice" while the following number indicates the number of faces on the dice. These dice are used to determine the probability of an action or reaction succeeding. S.P.A.W.N. does not limit your free will! It only quantifies the likelihood of you accomplishing your goals.
> 
> For example, if you would like to punch someone in the face, you have a d20 chance of hitting your victim which must be measured against your victim's Armor Class (AC), or ability to shrug off damage (dmg). If your victim has an AC of 12 and S.P.A.W.N. rolls a 14 on your behalf, then you will successfully punch your victim in the face for a total of 1d4+STR bludgeoning damage. STR stands for Strength Ability Score Modifier. You may learn more about Ability Score Modifiers in the Advanced Statistics Menu. So, to finish this example, you have punched your victim in the face for a total of 7 (1d4+STR) dmg. Wow! You sure can pack a punch!
> 
> Life on Dirt is best navigated through the Heads Up Display (HUD) S.P.A.W.N. has generated for you and all other citizens of Dirt. You are only able to view your own HUD. Some aspects of the HUD can be available at all times while others must be opened before each use. 
> 
> Now that you understand the nature of your existence in this world, would you like to continue the Tutorial? To continue, please open your Main Menu. To do this say: "Open Main Menu."

Zenith stared at the text box. She read it three times. She took a deep breath and let out an aggrieved sigh. 'Fuck my life,' she thought, still a little confused about what the fuck dice have to do with anything right now. This was not what she had in mind when she decided to take the tutorial, but at least she'd managed to glean some new information. She has a new body, new abilities, and is now on an entirely new planet run by some kind of freak omniscient AI that runs probabilities for every action every single person on this planet takes. 'Sure, okay. Why the fuck not?' she thought.

"Open Main Menu," she said. Idly she wondered, 'What dice did the S.P.A.W.N. have to roll for me to do that successfully?'

Ding!

The Main Menu opened. It was a radial menu with Character Profile at 12 o'clock followed by Advanced Statistics, Grimoire, and Inventory on the right side of the menu. Then there was Quest Log, Traits & Feats, and Social on the left side of the menu with Settings at 6 o'clock.

Ding!

> This is the Main Menu. From here you may select any of the listed menu screens. To exit say: "Exit Main Menu." Which menu would you like to explore first? To open a menu say: "Open (Menu Name)." Try opening a menu now.

Zenith examined the menu options for a moment before she said, "Open Settings." It hadn't even been a minute and she was already tired of talking to fucking air. She'd rather wave her arms around looking like a moron than announce what she was doing to all and sundry. 'There has to be a way to turn off voice commands,' she thought.

Ding!

The settings menu opened. It had three functions: Toggle On/Off followed by a list of features, Assign Shortcuts, and View Tutorial. Zenith perused the toggleable features briefly and delighted to see that Touch Screen was an option.

Ding!

> These are your Settings. Here you can toggle certain aspects of your HUD on or off, assign shortcuts, and view the tutorial. To toggle something on say: "(Aspect of HUD) toggle on." To toggle something off say: "(Aspect of HUD) toggle off." Try adjusting your experience now.

'Way ahead of you,' Zenith thought.

"Touch Screen toggle on," she said.

Ding!

> You've turned on Touch Screen! To get back to the Main Menu you can double tap your screen. To view Advanced Statistics, swipe to the right. To view Quest Log, swipe to the left.

Zenith smiled and then reached out to touch Voice Command and turn it off. 

Ding!

> You've turned off Voice Command!

Then she toggled off the sound effects too, since that "Ding! Ding! Ding!" shit was getting annoying.

> You've turned off Sound Effects!

Finally, she turned on the map. Usually maps did shit all for her when she played games. She was just that bad at directions. However, everything about her current situation said she should take advantage of every available opportunity if she wanted to survive and she wanted to survive.

> You've turned on View Map! You'll notice that if you turn your eyes to the upper right corner of your visual field, a map appears! As you can see, your Map is mostly blank. You must explore to discover areas of the map. Purchasing physical maps and studying their contents will open new areas of your HUD Map. The map will also show the locations of any Creatures, Guildmates, Party Members, and Friends that you have, provided you have that location unlocked on your map.

'Okay,' she thought. 'Not as useful as I'd hoped, but whatever. Now, let's check out what else is here.'

She tapped her screen twice and then selected her Character Profile from the Main Menu.

> * * *
> 
> **Character Profile**
> 
> _Zenith Fallen Aasimar Warlock 1_
> 
> Health: 12/12
> 
> Mana: 15/15
> 
> Experience: 0/300
> 
> Conditions: None
> 
> Armor Class: 11
> 
> Passive Perception: 12
> 
> Proficiency: +2
> 
> Creatures: Apollyon the Destroyer [Health 108/168]
> 
> * * *

Zenith stared.

> The Character Profile shows the basic information about your randomly generated character. At the top of your Character Profile, you see your Name, Race, Class, and Level. To see additional information about any of the information provided to you here, please tap on them.

'What the fuck is a Fallen Aasimar?' Zenith thought. She tapped it.

> Aasimar are divinely descended beings with mortal parents. Fallen aasimar have been touched by dark powers and their inner celestial light has been replaced by infernal shadow.

'What the fuck does it mean "touched by dark powers"?' she wondered a little hysterically. She looked back at the Character Profile screen and her eyes caught on the creature that she had with all that fucking health. 'Apollyon,' she knew, 'is the name of a demon. Do I have a fucking demon? As like, a pet?'

She swiped away the tab she had opened on fallen aasimar and cautiously poked the name Apollyon where it waited innocently at the bottom of her Character Profile.

> Apollyon the Destroyer is the deposed Lord of Cania, the eighth of the Nine Hells of Baator. He was usurped by Mephistopheles 100 years and one day ago. As the Lord of Cania Apollyon was second only to the King of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus. Now, Apollyon is on the run, constantly trying to stay ahead of the armies sent out to kill him.
> 
> When you were randomly generated as an aasimar, Apollyon reached out and touched your soul causing you to fall. This has formed a bond between you. He's your own personal guardian angel!
> 
> As a warlock you have formed a Pact with Apollyon, granting you phenomenal power for the small price of summoning Apollyon to the Material Plane. Would you like to summon Apollyon to the Material Plane? Selecting "No" will void your Pact and you will randomly generate a new class. However, Apollyon remains a fixture of your soul and he might be displeased.
> 
> Yes, summon Apollyon the Destroyer! | No, void my Pact!

'Well,' Zenith thought. 'Shit. If there's one thing I definitely don't need right now it's a demon with a grudge affixed to my soul. So, I guess I summon him? I mean, fuck it. At this point, phenomenal power probably won't be a bad thing, right? Right.'

Zenith reached out and hit yes. A new notification popped into view, but she ignored it and soon it disappeared. Suddenly there was a rumbling and then the smell of iron and molten rock. Heat washed against her face and body. She waved wildly at her HUD trying to dismiss all the screens and when she finally succeeded she watched, rather impressed by the pyrotechnics, as a towering figure stepped out of a pool of darkness and onto the sand before her. His skin was pale, his eyes burned like banked embers, and his hair flickered with a deep red flame. When he opened his mouth to laugh a deep sinister laugh, she caught a glimpse of wicked fangs. He was dressed in tarnished black plate armor complete with pointy fingered gauntlets and carried a worn flail. He was bleeding sluggishly from a wound near his left temple and there was a scar just beginning to heal bisecting his left eyebrow. It was obvious that he had Been Through Some Shit recently, even without her little banner full of his backstory.

"Try to catch me now, Mephistopheles, you pig-fucking cur!" he shouted at the sky, trailing off into more gasping giggles before he lost consciousness and dropped like a sack of potatoes to the ground without ceremony.

"Well," Zenith said. She took a moment to carefully consider what had just happened. "You are not a fucking pet. You are a person that I am now at least partially responsible for." She sighed deeply and then screamed, "Fuck you and fuck my life!"

Apollyon didn't so much as twitch. She cautiously got closer to him and rolled him over onto his side so he could breathe while he was passed the fuck out. Then she promptly ignored him and got back to her tutorial. She definitely wanted that finished before she had to really deal with her new demon companion, since apparently, he's fucking crazy.

There was a small blue dot floating in the corner of her vision just below the map and she pushed it, hoping it would turn the menu back on. And lo! it did. It opened the Main Menu and from there she tapped Advanced Statistics.

> * * *
> 
> **Advanced Statistics**  
>   
> ---  
>   
> Ability
> 
> | 
> 
> Score
> 
> | 
> 
> Modifier  
>   
> STRENGTH
> 
> | 
> 
> 17
> 
> | 
> 
> +3  
>   
> DEXTERITY
> 
> | 
> 
> 13
> 
> | 
> 
> +1  
>   
> CONSTITUTION
> 
> | 
> 
> 19
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> INTELLIGENCE
> 
> | 
> 
> 14
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> WISDOM
> 
> | 
> 
> 14
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> CHARISMA
> 
> | 
> 
> 20
> 
> | 
> 
> +5  
>   
> Skill
> 
> | 
> 
> Proficient
> 
> | 
> 
> Modifier  
>   
> Acrobatics
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +1  
>   
> Animal Handling
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Arcana
> 
> | 
> 
> YES
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> Athletics
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +3  
>   
> Deception
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +5  
>   
> History
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Insight
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Intimidation
> 
> | 
> 
> YES
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> Investigation
> 
> | 
> 
> YES
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> Medicine
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Nature
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Perception
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Performance
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +5  
>   
> Persuasion
> 
> | 
> 
> YES
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> Religion
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Sleight of Hand
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +1  
>   
> Stealth
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +1  
>   
> Survival
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> * * *

Zenith hummed in thought. She had no idea what the caps were for ability scores, but her gut was saying her stats were good, like "something glitched" good for a level 1 character, which she apparently was now. Fuck her life. Now, 'What the fuck is a modifier?' she thought. She tapped it.

> Ability Score Modifiers effect the probability of a given action succeeding or failing based on the S.P.A.W.N.'s calculations of your efforts. Positive modifiers increase your chances of success and negative modifiers decrease those chances. Raising your Ability Score will gradually raise your Ability Score Modifier. This can be done at certain levels when you level up.

She swiped the notification away and then dillied for a moment looking at her stats again. She thought, 'It's pretty self-explanatory and if I have questions, I can always come back and tap shit later.' So, with a nod she swiped her HUD to the right and opened the next menu.

> * * *
> 
> **Grimoire**
> 
> Spellcasting Ability: Charisma
> 
> * * *
> 
> Cantrips
> 
>   * Light
>   * Please Select a Spell
>   * Please Select a Spell
> 

> 
> 1st Level
> 
>   * Please Select a Spell
>   * Please Select a Spell
> 


'So that's why my charisma's so high,' Zenith thought. 'I thought that was weird.'

> The Grimoire shows the spells that you know and can use at will, provided you have the mana available to cast them. Mana regenerates with rest and sustenance. Mana regeneration rates increase with higher Constitution Ability Modifiers. Spells cost a fixed amount per level, with Cantrips costing nothing and 1st Level spells costing 5 Mana Points (MP) per casting. 
> 
> You'll notice that you already know one cantrip. This spell was granted to you by virtue of you being a fallen aasimar.
> 
> Would you like to add to your Grimoire now?
> 
> Yes | No

Zenith quickly hit yes and immediately was inundated with a long list of spells organized, at a glance, by level that she promptly decided not to read. This list was quickly followed by another notification.

> You've accepted the Quest: **Add to Your Grimoire**
> 
> Rewards: 10 XP

She dismissed the quest notification and went back to the tutorial.

> This is the complete Warlock's Spellbook available to those warlocks who have entered into a Pact with a Fiend. As a Level 1 Warlock who has formed a Pact with a fiend, you are entitled to choose two cantrips and two level 1 spells from this spellbook to add to your Grimoire. These selections may be altered each time you level up. However, you may not alter your Grimoire at any other time, so choose your spells wisely!

Zenith dismissed the notification and looked back at the spellbook that she'd ignored earlier with a wrinkle of her nose. She didn't particularly want to read all those spells. There were a lot. So, she was gonna go for the ones that spoke to her and hope for the best. She immediately selected Eldritch Blast and glanced at the description that popped up.

> **Eldritch Blast**
> 
> _Evocation Cantrip_
> 
> A beam of crackling energy that streaks toward a creature within range. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 force damage.
> 
> The Spell creates more than one beam when you reach higher levels: two beams at 5th level, three beams at 11th level, and four beams at 17th level. You can direct the beams at the same target or at different ones. Each beam is calculated with a separate attack roll.
> 
> Add to your Grimoire?
> 
> Yes | No

She liked the look of that one well-enough, so she hit yes and then looked back at the list of available cantrips. She honestly had no idea what other cantrip to pick, because frankly, she had no idea what this world was like or what she was supposed to be doing! So, she picked Minor Illusion because it looked like fun.

> **Minor Illusion**
> 
> _Illusion Cantrip_
> 
> You create a sound or an image of an object within range that lasts for 1 minute. The illusion ends if you dismiss it or cast this spell again.
> 
> If you create a sound, its volume can range from a whisper to a scream. It can be your voice, someone else's voice, a lion's roar, a beating of drums or any other sound you choose. The sound continues unabated through the duration, or you can make discrete sounds at different times before the spell ends.
> 
> If you create an image of an object -- such as a chair, muddy footprints, or a small chest -- it must be no larger than a 5-foot cube. The image can't create sound, light, smell, or any other sensory effect. Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it.
> 
> If a creature examines the sound or image, the creature can determine that it is an illusion. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the illusion becomes faint to the creature.
> 
> Add to your Grimoire?
> 
> Yes | No

'Yeah, good enough,' Zenith thought reading over the description for the spell. She hit yes, then she turned to the 1st Level spells and immediately tapped Armor of Agathys, but after only a glance she dismissed the screen and tapped Arms of Hadar instead.

> **Arms of Hadar**
> 
> _1st-level Conjuration_
> 
> You invoke the power of Hadar, the Dark Hunger. Tendrils of dark energy erupt from you and batter all creatures within 10 feet of you. Each creature in that area must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, a target takes 2d6 necrotic damage. On a successful save, the creature takes half damage, but suffers no other effect.
> 
> At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using more MP than the initial required amount, the damage increases by 1d6 for every additional 5 MP used in the spell.
> 
> Add to your Grimoire?
> 
> Yes | No

'What the fuck is a Strength saving throw?' Zenith wondered. 'Is this more dice bullshit that I only kind of need to understand?' She tapped the words "saving throw."

> A saving throw is an attempt to resist a threat. Intent is everything! Your every action and decision is calculated but you don't need to worry about this aspect of your existence, just know that S.P.A.W.N. is rolling dice in the background of your experience to determine an outcome.

'Knew it,' she thought. 'Though that was probably the creepiest way S.P.A.W.N. could have possibly explained that.' She dismissed the notification and added Arms of Hadar to her Grimoire. Then her eyes caught on Hellish Rebuke and she glanced at Apollyon, still laying on his side collapsed at her feet. 'I mean, I'm bound to a demon twice over, may as well lean into the aesthetic,' she thought. She tapped Hellish Rebuke.

> **Hellish Rebuke**
> 
> _1st-level Evocation_
> 
> You point your finger, and the creature that damaged you is momentarily surrounded by hellish flames. The creature must make a Dexterity saving throw. It takes 2d10 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful save. 
> 
> At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using more MP than the initial required amount, the damage increases by 1d10 for every additional 5 MP used in the spell.
> 
> Add to your Grimoire?
> 
> Yes | No

'Hell yes,' she thought. She quickly added the spell to her Grimoire.

> Congratulations! You've completed the Quest: **Add to your Grimoire**!
> 
> Rewards: 10 XP

She dismissed the notification and looked at her Grimoire.

> * * *
> 
> **Grimoire**
> 
> Spellcasting Ability: Charisma
> 
> * * *
> 
> Cantrips
> 
>   * Eldritch Blast
>   * Light
>   * Minor Illusion
> 

> 
> 1st Level
> 
>   * Arms of Hadar
>   * Hellish Rebuke
> 


Zenith hummed as she looked over her list of spells. Idly, she tapped Light.

> **Light**
> 
> _Evocation Cantrip_
> 
> You touch one object that is no larger than 10 feet in any dimension. For one hour, the object sheds bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. The light can be colored as you like. Completely covering the object with something opaque blocks the light. The spell ends if you cast it again or dismiss it.
> 
> If you target an object held or worn by a creature, that creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw to avoid the spell.

She hummed again in thought. 'That could be useful,' she thought. At her feet, Apollyon snuffled, beginning to rouse before he settled again. The wrinkle in his brow smoothed as he entered a more restful sleep. 'Ah,' Zenith thought, 'that's adorable.'

She swiped her menu to the right and saw her inventory.

> The Inventory is where all your belongings are stored. Your carrying capacity is determined by the kind of container you possess and your strength. Your carrying capacity is 255 lbs and you have a simple backpack. Currently you are carrying 45 pounds in your inventory.
> 
> To switch containers, remove the container from the icon in the top left corner and replace it with the new container. Be careful when removing a container from your inventory. Doing so will dump all contents of your inventory! You may store similar items in the same inventory slot. Dying will automatically dump your inventory.
> 
> When retrieving items, you must reach into the inventory slot and retrieve each item individually or in handfuls, if they are small items. You will see a count of how many items are stored in each slot in the bottom right corner of each inventory slot.

"Fuck," she said. She hovered her hand over the icons and saw the names of the contents. The first thing she noticed about her inventory, which was a pretty standard set of boxes with icons inside them indicating their contents, was that she had no food and no water. On the plus side, she had all the writing supplies her heart could desire. In point of fact, she had 2 ounces of plain black ink, 20 sheets of parchment, a pen with which to use the ink, and a small bag of sand to dry her ink. Don't get her wrong, she loved stationary as much as the next librarian, but what the fuck! What's she supposed to do with parchment and ink when she dies of thirst in the fucking desert? She wrinkled her nose, annoyed, and looked over the rest of her things. She had plenty of weapons: a greatclub, two daggers, and a crossbow with 20 bolts. So, at least she had the means to kill her own food if she could figure out how to find an edible animal and how to prepare it. It couldn't be that hard right? Hell, maybe Apollyon would know how. She tapped the greatclub icon.

> **Greatclub**
> 
> A simple melee weapon weighing 10 lbs worth 2 sp. This club deals 1d8 bludgeoning dmg and is best wielded two-handed.

'Okay,' she thought. 'What's a sp?' She tapped it.

> Currency on Dirt is universal! There are five denominations: copper, silver, electrum, gold, and platinum. Copper pieces (cp) are worth 10 silver pieces (sp), 50 electrum pieces (ep), 100 gold pieces (gp), and 1000 platinum pieces (pp). Silver pieces are worth 5 electrum pieces, 10 gold pieces, and 100 platinum pieces. Electrum pieces are worth 2 gold pieces, and 20 platinum pieces. Gold pieces are worth 10 platinum pieces. Most items are paid for with copper, silver, or gold. Your copper, silver, electrum, gold, and platinum pieces are stored in the banner on the bottom of your Inventory Menu. To access your monies, simply reach in and grab a handful at a time. You currently have 145 gold pieces. Spend them wisely!

'Welp, that is going to be a bitch getting used to,' Zenith thought. She had already forgotten the conversion rates. She dismissed the lecture on currency and the banner describing her greatclub and turned to the rest of her inventory. Immediately her eyes found a small black book, which even in icon form seemed a little off. She tapped it.

> **The Names of Demons**
> 
> A magical book weighing 2 lbs. It has not been appraised and it's value is unknown. This self-updating book details the names of every demon currently residing in the Nine Hells of Baator, including their statistics and dispositions. It does not list any demons residing on any other Plane. 

"Holy shit," she muttered. 'This,' she thought. 'This is a huge cheat! What the hell! Is this because of Apollyon?'

She glanced down at Apollyon before looking back at the book's description. She reached into her inventory, ignoring the sensation of Newtonian fluid engulfing her hand, and pulled the book out. It was cold to the touch, a little damp, and smelled faintly of blood. 

'Well, that's not creepy at all,' she thought with a roll of her eyes. 'I'm definitely not going to get cursed just for touching this thing.' 

She still didn't put it down. She opened it to a random page and the smell of blood got stronger. Even the pages seemed a little moist and she looked at her fingers, half expecting them to come away bloody. They didn't. She looked at the page she'd opened to. "Adramelech," read the header. "Bearded Devil Fighter Level 3." It went on to read: "Adramelech is best known for his keen sense of fashion and love of fine clothes."

'Huh,' she thought. She promptly stopped reading the description of his personality and looked instead at his stats. 'Strength 16, Dexterity 15, Constitution 15, Intelligence 9, Wisdom 11, Charisma 11,' she read. 'Yeah,' she thought comparing Adramelech's stats with what she remembered of her own. 'I definitely have glitched stats.' 

She idly flipped through a few more pages before the feel of the book got the best of her and she put it back in her inventory. She looked over the rest of her inventory and saw leather armor. She dismissed her menu and glanced down at herself. She was wearing plain brown pants, sturdy leather boots, a dark green shirt, and a grey hooded cloak. Not exactly fit for desert weather, but not the worst thing she could be in. Still, it was no protection from attack. She wondered if she should change into the armor. Given how many weapons she now had on her person, it was probably a good idea. No one carried that many weapons unless they expected to be attacked.

She pulled the armor out of her inventory. Then she spent several frustrating minutes trying to finagle herself into leather armor in the scorching heat with the desert sun beating down on her. When she was done, she knew she was going to chafe like a motherfucker while the armor got worn into shape. She wasn't looking forward to it, but at least she was better protected now. She wondered what her Armor Class was with the armor on. She pulled the cloak back on and put the hood up to try to get the sun off her for a little bit. She pulled out her daggers and affixed them to her belt on either side of her hips. She dithered about pulling out her greatclub, but with a glance down at Apollyon she decided to wait. If he didn't wake up soon she'd end up carrying him when she started moving and she didn't want to juggle a rather large demon with a 10 pound club. She swiped her menu back to her Character Profile and was disappointed to see that her AC had only gone up one measly point. On the plus side, she now had a whole 210 xp. So, she'd be leveling up soonish. She swiped her menu to the left.

> The Quest Log shows the current quests you are undertaking as well as a record of the quests you have completed. Tapping on a Quest Name will give you more details about the quest. Quest details will be updated as new information is discovered about your goals and the expected rewards. Be careful! Sometimes rewards are promised that won't be delivered due to faulty information and sometimes rewards will be awarded without any prior indication. The only reward that is never in question is the experience you gain from any given quest!

'Well that's not ominous at all,' Zenith thought a little flabbergasted. She read the notification again. 'So, basically all quests are suspect. Great.'

> * * *
> 
> **Current Quests**
> 
>   * Complete the Tutorial [Rewards: 10 XP]
> 

> 
> **Completed Quests**
> 
>   * Complete Your Pact [Rewards: 200 XP...]
>   * Add to Your Grimoire [Rewards: 10 XP]
> 

> 
> * * *

"Huh," Zenith said. 'I don't remember that being a quest,' she thought as she tapped Complete Your Pact.

> **Complete Your Pact**
> 
> _When you randomly generated as a warlock, you entered into a Pact with the fiend Apollyon. The terms of the agreement were thus: Magical power and mutual protection in exchange for promptly summoning Apollyon from the Nine Hells of Baator to the Material Plane. This Pact is binding and cannot be made void once completed._
> 
> [Rewards: 200 XP, Apollyon is added to your Friends List and cannot be removed, Apollyon is added to your Party and cannot be removed]

"God, I hope you're not a dick," Zenith muttered to Apollyon. He didn't answer. She swiped her menu to the next screen.

> The Traits & Feats Menu shows the race, class, and background specific traits and features, or feats, of your randomly generate character. Your background, **Amateur Book Collector** , was created specifically for you and has traits and feats unique to you.

'Shit,' she thought, 'do ya gotta call me out like that?'

> **Fallen Aasimar Traits**
> 
>   * Healing Hands
>   * Light Bearer
>   * Celestial Resistance
>   * Necrotic Shroud
>   * Darkvision
>   * Languages I
> 

> 
> **Warlock Features**
> 
>   * Languages II
>   * The Fiend: Dark One's Blessing
> 

> 
> **Amateur Book Collector Features**
> 
>   * Tool Proficiencies
>   * Languages III
>   * Book Club
>   * Brawler
> 


"Ooh," Zenith said. 'This is awesome,' she thought. She tapped all of the fallen aasimar traits.

> **Healing Hands**
> 
> You can touch a creature and cause it to regain a number of hit points equal to your level. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you've had a good night's rest.

'Yes!' she thought. 'Healing shit! I mean, it's not useful at level one, but still, healing is healing.' She looked at it for a moment longer before dismissing it and looking at the next trait.

> **Light Bearer**
> 
> You know the light cantrip.

'Already knew that,' she thought, dismissing it.

> **Celestial Resistance**
> 
> You have resistance to necrotic and radiant damage.

She didn't really wanna know what "necrotic damage" would look like. Rotting while you're still alive did not sound like Zenith's idea of a good time. Good thing she had some defense against that, because now it was going to haunt her nightmares. 'What the fuck kind of world is this that "necrotic damage" is a thing I have to be wary of?' she wondered, dismissing the window.

> **Necrotic Shroud**
> 
> Starting at 3rd level, you can unleash the divine energy within yourself, causing your eyes to turn into pools of darkness and two skeletal, ghostly wings to sprout from your back. The instant you transform, other creatures within 10 feet of you that can see you must each succeed on a Charisma saving throw or become frightened of you.
> 
> Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it. During it, once per attack, you can deal extra necrotic damage to one target when you deal damage to it with an attack or a spell. The extra necrotic damage equals your level.
> 
> Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you've had a good night's rest.

'Never mind,' she thought as she dismissed the window, 'necrotic damage is amazing. Love that necrotic damage. Damn, I'm a badass.'

> **Darkvision**
> 
> Blessed with a radiant soul, your vision can easily cut through darkness. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of grey.

'Definitely useful,' she thought. 'And hey, that's definitely a plus for this body! No more glasses!' She smiled and dismissed the window, turning to the last of her fallen aasimar traits.

> **Languages I**
> 
> You speak Celestial, the language of celestials, or beings from the Upper Planes.

'God, I hope I can speak whatever language is used the most around here,' she thought worriedly as she dismissed the Languages I window and opened the warlock features.

> **Languages II**
> 
> You speak Infernal, the language of fiends, or beings from the Lower Planes.

"That must be because of you," she said to Apollyon who continued to rest peacefully. 'Definitely worried I'm not gonna be able to talk to normal everyday people though.'

> **The Fiend: Dark One's Blessing**
> 
> Starting at 1st level, when you reduce a hostile creature to 0 health, you gain health equal to your Charisma modifier + your warlock level (minimum of 1) even if you are at full health.

"Oh shit!" Zenith said, looking at Dark One's Blessing. She looked down at Apollyon again. "Even if you are an asshole, it's probably worth it for this! That's like half my health, and it stacks. Damn that's useful." 

Apollyon stirred briefly, burrowing his head deeper into his arms before he settled again.

"How long has it been since you slept?" she asked him. "Seriously, don't you have a head wound? Should I wake you up?" 

She honestly was a little concerned. She cautiously poked him with her foot, but he didn't wake. She hummed in thought, 'On the one hand, he's obviously doing me a solid and we're best friends for life or whatever now, so I should absolutely not let him die. On the other hand,' she poked him with her foot again to no reaction. 'I don't want him to come up swinging if I don't let him wake up naturally. With 168 health, even if he is down 60 points, he's gotta pack a punch and I am super, super squishy right now.' 

That decided, she left him to continue sleeping, closed her warlock features, and finally opened the Amateur Book Collector features.

> **Tool Proficiencies**
> 
> Proficient in one gaming set (playing cards) and one type of artisan's tools (Calligrapher's supplies).

'That explains why the fuck I have a set of playing cards and so much fucking calligraphy shit I guess,' she thought as she dismissed the window, 'It's because I'm a fucking Amateur Book Collector instead of anything useful!'

> **Languages III**
> 
> You speak Common, the trade tongue of Dirt. Most people you meet will speak Common, though it's rare for someone to be monolingual.

"Fuck yes!" Zenith said. 'Oh thank fuck, that could have been bad,' she thought, dismissing the window and turning to the next one.

> **Book Club**
> 
> Before you were transported into this strange new world, you were an ardent collector of books. Scholars feel a kinship with you. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other scholars and lovers of knowledge, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.

Zenith sighed and dismissed the window. She was a little disappointed honestly. She wanted something like XP for reading or some shit like that. That would have been awesome.

> **Brawler**
> 
> Accustomed to rough-and-tumble fighting using whatever weapons happen to be at hand, most commonly books, you gain the following benefits: You are proficient with improvised weapons and unarmed strikes, and your unarmed strikes use a d4 for damage.

She chuckled a little, fondly remembering all the times she'd beaned some dumb fuck in the head with a book. At least this one was more useful than Book Club. She dismissed the window and swiped to her last menu. 

> * * *
> 
> **Social**
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Friend List**
> 
> **Guild**
> 
> **Party**

Zenith looked at the three options and clicked her Friend List.

> This is your Friend List. To add a friend to your Friend List select [Add Friend] and shake your new friend's hand, then select [Yes] when prompted. To delete a friend, double tap on their name in your Friend List and select [Yes] when prompted. Some friends cannot be deleted, such as your friend Apollyon, due to arcane agreements you have entered into. To view more information about a friend, tap on their name once. You may also send private messages to your friends from any distance! This feature cannot be turned off or muted.

Apollyon's name was the only one on her Friend List. She tapped it and his stats popped up.

> * * *
> 
> **Advanced Statistics**  
>   
> ---  
>   
> Ability
> 
> | 
> 
> Score
> 
> | 
> 
> Modifier  
>   
> STRENGTH
> 
> | 
> 
> 27
> 
> | 
> 
> +8  
>   
> DEXTERITY
> 
> | 
> 
> 14
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> CONSTITUTION
> 
> | 
> 
> 24
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> INTELLIGENCE
> 
> | 
> 
> 22
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> WISDOM
> 
> | 
> 
> 18
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> CHARISMA
> 
> | 
> 
> 24
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> **Apollyon Demon King Fighter 1**
> 
> **Health** : 108/168 **Mana** : 17/17 **Experience** : 210/300 **Conditions** : Exhaustion Level 1 **Armor Class** : 19 **Passive Perception** : 16 **Proficiency** : +2 **Creatures** : Zenith [Health: 12/12]  
>   
> Skill
> 
> | 
> 
> Proficient
> 
> | 
> 
> Modifier  
>   
> Acrobatics
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Animal Handling
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> Arcana
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Athletics
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +8  
>   
> Deception
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> History
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Insight
> 
> | 
> 
> Yes
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Intimidation
> 
> | 
> 
> Yes
> 
> | 
> 
> +9  
>   
> Investigation
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Medicine
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> Nature
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Perception
> 
> | 
> 
> Yes
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Performance
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +7  
>   
> Persuasion
> 
> | 
> 
> Yes
> 
> | 
> 
> +9  
>   
> Religion
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +6  
>   
> Sleight of Hand
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Stealth
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +2  
>   
> Survival
> 
> | 
> 
> | 
> 
> +4  
>   
> * * *

"Holy fucking shit," Zenith said. She looked down at Apollyon again. "Dude, what the fuck is up with your stats? No level 1 character should have stats like that, or am I just severely misunderstanding how the stats in this world work? And how's a former Lord of Cania or whatever have a level of 1 anyway? Did you like, devolve or some shit?"

She didn't get a reply. She exited Apollyon's stats and her Friend List. Then she tapped Guild.

> This menu is unavailable to you as you haven't joined a guild. To join a guild, you must enter a guild house and sign a magically binding contract with that guild. Guild houses are commonplace in cities and large towns but are rare in other settlements. Guilds range widely in purpose and disposition, so choose your guild wisely as it is often a permanent decision! Alternatively, you can create your own guild provided you have purchased a property that you can designate the guild house. At this time, you own no property and so are ineligible to found a guild.

Zenith hummed and dismissed the window before tapping Party.

> The Party Menu shows the members of your party and the party's chat feature. To use the chat feature, you must have Voice Command turned on. When you wish to send a message say: "Party message (Your Message) send." Or say: "Party message (Your Message)." Then tap [Send] in the chat box. To delete a message without sending it, tap the chat box. To view the chat log, double tap the chat box.
> 
> Party members gain experience from every party member's accomplishments. For example, one party member's completed quest with a reward for 10 XP would give 10 XP to each member of the party. 
> 
> The maximum members of a party is determined by the Charisma Ability Score Modifier of the party's leader. The party's leader is indicated by an underline of their name. In your case, you are the party leader and the party member limit is 5. The party's leader can dismiss members of the party at will, provided there are no magically binding contracts disallowing this. Other members of the party can summon themselves to the party's leader at any time provided they are occupying the same plane. Furthermore, the party leader can change the party's name. To do this you must have Voice Command turned on, then you must double tap the party's name and say: "(New Party Name)." Then tap the Party's name again.

'Shit,' she thought. 'I wonder if Apollyon's experience was gained from my completed quests? Seriously, what the fuck is up with him? It doesn't make sense.' She shook her head and set aside the mystery for when Apollyon woke up. She could ask him what the fuck was wrong with him then. For now, she looked at the party menu. It was pretty basic. There were the party member's names on the left side of the screen, followed by Health, Mana, and Conditions. The party name was at the top. It just said, "Zenith's Party."

'This thing is determined to make me talk to the air, isn't it?' she thought. She swiped over to her Setting menu and turned Voice Command back on. She ignored the notification that popped up telling her she'd turned on Voice Command until it went away and then exited her menu.

> Congratulations! You've completed the Quest: **Complete the Tutorial**!
> 
> Rewards: 10 XP

'That's it?' she wondered. 'What the fuck am I supposed to do now?' She dismissed the notification and looked around. For the first time since she opened her eyes to that very first notification she really took in her surroundings. There was a lot of sand. She knew there was a lot of sand, but really, it bears repeating. Where Apollyon had come through that weird portal of darkness and heat, the sand had been turned to ugly brown glass. Other than that, there were no distinguishing features that Zenith could see. That was bad, because she had no idea what direction to go in if she wanted to start moving towards a town or something, and she did want to do that. She needed water, food, and shelter and soon. This sun was killing her. 

'Well,' she thought, 'nothing for it but to pick a direction and hope for the best, I guess.' She looked around and decided to go right, away from the sun so she wouldn't have to fight the glare. She crouched down beside Apollyon and carefully touched his shoulder. He didn't stir. She eyed him critically and decided that yes, she probably could carry him if she could only finagle him onto her back. It would suck, but it's not like she could just leave him here. She'd just have to risk him coming up swinging. Hopefully, he'd be too disoriented to actually land a hit if he did. 

Awkwardly and with much pausing to judge whether Apollyon had woken, Zenith managed to flop and pull and push him onto her back and then staggered upright. His head fell forward into her neck and his arms hung limply across her shoulders while she gripped his thighs firmly and hiked him further up her back. Then she started to walk.


	2. Walking Montage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Zenith and Apollyon trek through a desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i edited chapter 1 before posting this. what you need to know: i nerfed Apollyon by cutting his health in half. he's still not anywhere close to squishy, but he's squishier, which is what matters. also you'll notice that the way they interact with the HUD is a little different: certain kinds of notifications (the ones they can't tap for more information) dismiss themselves instead of needing to be manually dismissed. i just thought that read a little easier and made more sense.

Zenith walked for hours. She carried Apollyon on her back. She carried him in her arms. She dragged him along behind her by his armpits. Every hour without fail she would get a notification.

> Your Constitution saving throw was successful!

"What the fuck does that even mean?" she asked Apollyon after the second time it happened. He didn't answer. "I mean, fuck is it measuring how well I can haul your ass across the desert?"

She looked down at Apollyon in her arms. It was a little awkward carrying him like this, given how much taller he was than her and how bulky he was in all that plate, but her back was getting really sweaty and she wanted to let that dry a bit before she put him on her back again.

"I mean, goddamn," she said. "I don't need some fucked up AI to tell me how well I can do a thing."

> Your Constitution saving throw was successful!

"All the things this AI can do, and it insists on stating the obvious," Zenith told Apollyon. Dragging him behind her was definitely easier than carrying him, but she felt bad about scuffing up his armor. Hopefully that would buff out.

"Sorry about this dude," she said. "I just need a little break and then I'll carry you again."

> Your Constitution saving throw was successful!

"Okay my guy," she said to Apollyon. "You need to get your face out of my neck. I am way too sweaty for skin contact right now."

She jostled him so his head fell more towards her shoulder and nearly overbalanced. She stumbled, weaving like a drunken giraffe before she regained her footing. "Ha!" she said, planting her feet solidly in the sand. "I didn't fall! And," she sighed, "you didn't even see my awesome save. This sucks."

> You've failed a Constitution saving throw!

Zenith was deliberately not thinking about how long she'd been walking. She was starting to think she had vastly overestimated her ability to carry Apollyon's dead weight around in this kind of heat.

> You are suffering from **Exhaustion Level 1**.

She stumbled to her knees and let Apollyon fall from her back onto the burning sands. 'No shit, I'm exhausted,' she thought venomously. She glanced around. The sun was beginning to set. She had been carrying him for hours. She was surprised she'd managed for so long. Apparently there was something to be said for randomly generated bodies that operated under rpg mechanics. Idly she tapped the notification and a new window popped up just as the notification disappeared.

> You are overburdened traversing difficult terrain in extreme heat. You failed a Constitution saving throw! You have **Exhaustion Level 1**. You now have disadvantage on all future ability checks until **Exhaustion Level 1** has been resolved.

She dismissed the window and noticed that the phrase **Exhaustion Level 1** remained on her HUD in the bottom left corner. She groaned and took a few gasping breaths and laid back on the sand, spread-eagled as the sun went down. She stared up at the night sky, marveling at the differences between Dirt and Earth. For one thing, there were the moons. There were two of them. One was nearly twice the size of the other and a pale blue. The smaller moon looked nearly identical to the moon she'd left behind on Earth. They were both full and so luminous she couldn't tell if she was seeing so well because she had darkvision or if it was just that bright.

'Probably the darkvision,' she thought after a moment of contemplation.

Then there were the stars. There were so many more stars visible than she was used to, she was almost overwhelmed. She wondered, 'How many constellations have been mapped so far? What are their names, their shapes? What are their stories?'

> Would you like to study the constellations?
> 
> Yes | No

"Huh," Zenith said. She clicked yes.

> You've accepted the Quest: **Stargazer**
> 
> Rewards: 25 XP

Zenith hummed. 'So, if I deliberate on something, I can get quests out of it, huh?' she thought. 'Or is it setting goals that creates quests?' She thought very hard about the blue moon, carefully keeping any desire to learn more about it from her mind. Nothing happened. Then she thought, 'I'm going to discover the name of this desert.'

> Would you like to discover the name of the desert you're traveling through?
> 
> Yes | No

'Huh,' she thought, 'so it is goal-oriented.' She clicked yes.

> You've accepted the Quest: **Intrepid Explorer I**
> 
> Rewards: 95 XP

'Okay,' she thought. 'Why the fuck is that worth so much XP?' She tried tapping the quest name.

> **Intrepid Explorer I**
> 
> _Discover the name of the kingdom._
> 
> _There are three regions in this kingdom. Map all three regions! 0/3_
> 
> _Learn the names of the regions you discover. 0/3_
> 
> Rewards: 95 XP

'What the fuck?' she thought. 'That's not what I was trying to do. I just wanted to know the name of this desert, not develop a hobby in cartography!'

Beside her, Apollyon began to stir. She dismissed her HUD, rolled over onto her hands and knees, and crawled a short distance away from him, just enough that she was out of arms reach Then she sat back on her haunches. 'Of course, you wake up now that we've stopped moving,' she thought uncharitably.

"Hey," she said. "Apollyon? Hey, are you waking up?"

He groaned. "Zenith?" he muttered into the sand. "Where are we?"

"No idea," Zenith replied. She watched him cautiously, taking careful note of his demeanor, which seemed more tired than whatever hysteria had gripped him when he appeared. Also, he knew her name. That had to be a good sign, right? Or was it just creepy? "I just picked a direction and started walking," she said.

Apollyon began to sit up, scrubbing the sand from his face and dusting it off his armor with a small frown. He looked at her. "You said yes," he said. Relief and disbelief mingled on his face and in his eyes.

"Um," she said. "What?"

"The Pact," Apollyon said with a manic grin that showed off his fangs. "You agreed to the Pact!"

"Yeah," she said, ponderously. "Yeah, I did. Maybe explain what that is now please? Actually, why don't we start with how you know my name."

> Your Persuasion check was successful!

'What the fuck?' Zenith thought as the notification disappeared. 'What is that and how did I do it?' She waited for the quest to pop up that would reward her for discovering that and was disappointed when nothing happened. 'Shit,' she thought. 'I bet that was something I was supposed to learn about in the tutorial and I skipped it. Fuck!'

Apollyon moved to sit more comfortably, his unsettling grin becoming less pronounced and smugger. It made Zenith want to smack him one right in the face, but she swiftly and zealously repressed that urge because it was a stupid impulse and she was trying to limit the number of those she indulged in.

"I chose you," he said. "When I started the Pact quest, I was given a list of all the souls that were currently being generated and I got to select the soul I wanted to form a Pact with based on their stats and a summary of their personality."

"What? You saw my resume and went, 'Yeah, that one! I'll bind my soul to hers for eternity!'" she asked incredulously. Apollyon scowled.

"Well, it worked didn't it?" he snapped.

"Woah," she said, "calm your tits. I was just saying, I don't get why you picked me. That's all."

He crossed his arms. "Yeah, well, you were the most interesting and the oldest. I didn't want to drag a kid around with me for however long it took them to grow up."

"Wait," she said. "S.P.A.W.N.'s stealing kids too? Fuck, should we do something? That sounds bad."

"Do what? No one knows what S.P.A.W.N. is, or where it is, or anything about it but what it tells you," he said. "And I'm not wasting my time starting an orphanage if that's what you were thinking."

"What?" she said. "No, I don't want to start an orphanage."

"Then forget about the kids, okay? Most of them are probably dead by now anyway," he said. "The younger ones don't last long."

'Well, that's lovely,' Zenith thought, her eyes wide with shock.

Apollyon ignored her. He looked around, patting himself down before flicking his hand through the air in front of him, obviously interacting with his HUD. He scowled as he looked at Zenith.

"Where's my flail?" he asked. Zenith shook herself out of her funk, putting aside the thought of all those dead kids for nightmare fuel. She held her left elbow in her right hand, lifting her left hand to cover her mouth to hide a wince. There was a moment of expectant silence. Apollyon's stare became progressively more resigned the longer the silence stretched.

"So, I forgot it back there," she said, pointing in the direction they'd come from. "Shit, I didn't even think. It wasn't special or anything was it, cause I really don't want to walk all the way back. It took a lot outta me to get us this far."

Apollyon looked in the direction she pointed; his brow furrowed. He rubbed a hand through his shaggy, flame-riddled red hair and down his face, wincing as he touched the wounds still untreated on his head. 'How is his hair not burning?' Zenith wondered. Even his eyebrows were on fire, but he didn't seem to be in any pain and there wasn't any smoke. She kind of wanted to touch his hair, just to see if the flames could be touched at all. She couldn't remember what they felt like when she'd been carrying him and his head was resting against her. They weren't hot, she knew, or at least not in comparison to the sun. She wasn't going to touch them though, because that was another stupid impulse.

"How far have we come?" he asked. "How long has it been?"

"Um," she said. She looked at her map, using her fingers to pinch it larger to view the distance they'd covered. "About 10 miles and like five hours." She was still so impressed with herself for that. That was an awesome feat of strength and endurance compared to what she had been capable of before she got generated. "Also," she added, "are you aware you're really fucking heavy? I got a notification I was fucking overburdened hauling your armored ass across this stupid fucking desert."

Apollyon stared at her for a moment, his face blank. He looked down at himself and looked back up at her. He gestured with both hands down the length of his body, which was a full five inches taller than her and covered in plate armor weighing more than a hundred pounds.

"Oh," he said, "was I heavy? How strange."

Zenith snorted with laughter despite herself. Apollyon rolled his eyes and turned back to his HUD. He reached forward and pulled a waterskin from thin air.

'Or,' Zenith supposed, 'from his fucking inventory. God, that looks strange.'

Apollyon took a drink and looked back at her. "Why aren't you drinking? You'll get heatstroke, and I need you alive," he said.

'Good,' she thought. 'I like being alive.'

"I don't have any food or water, just a fuckton of calligraphy supplies," she said, looking at Apollyon's waterskin with hope sparkling in her eyes. "And I already have Exhaustion Level 1 or whatever. Is heatsroke a separate thing or is that it?"

Apollyon stared at her incredulously. He tossed her his waterskin and said, "No, that's it. How do you have exhaustion already? It's been less than a day since you generated."

Zenith took small sips from the waterskin, enjoying the feeling of water slipping down her parched throat. She said, "Hauling your ass across the desert is how. We went over this. Why are you exhausted?" she asked. She remembered seeing the condition on his stats menu.

"I've been on the run from an army of demons for 100 years. Rest was a little hard to come by," he replied. "Why don't you have rations? All new denizens are given 10 days' worth as a matter of course."

"I don't know what to tell you," she said. "I think my character generation or whatever glitched. Check out my stats, they're fucked up too. Though I guess you already saw them or whatever. It might also have something to do with my useless fucking background. I'm pretty sure that's why I have all the calligraphy shit, anyway."

She took another drink as Apollyon opened his friend list and tapped on her name.

"Huh," he said. He gave her an appraising look. "You're right, something is wrong with your stats. They weren't like this earlier."

"Think it'll come back to bite me in the ass later?" she asked.

Apollyon shook his head. Zenith pulled the waterskin away from her mouth and shook it, trying to determine how much water was left. She grimaced and reluctantly handed the waterskin back to Apollyon. There wasn't even enough for tomorrow with both of them drinking from it. If they didn't find some sign of civilization soon, they were dead. If they were lucky, they would come upon other travelers. With Charisma like theirs, hopefully they'd be able to bargain with them for some supplies.

"It's a bit of good luck," he said, referring to her uncommonly good stats as he stored his waterskin. He also gave it a curious shake and grimaced, likely coming to the same conclusion she had. "It means you're more likely to survive. I wouldn't question it."

'Yeah,' she thought. 'That doesn't sound foreboding at all.'

"So, hey, speaking of stats," Zenith said. "What the fuck is up with yours?"

"You mean, why doesn't my level match my ability scores?" he clarified. She nodded. "A consequence of entering into a Pact. It's a good way for someone like me to gain more power, but I go back to level one in exchange."

"So, what?" she said. "You're in New Game Plus mode or something?"

He gave it some thought and nodded. "Yes, exactly," he said as he stood. "How long have you been resting?"

"I don't know," Zenith said. "Since the sun set." That had been an hour ago, judging by the height of the moon.

Apollyon nodded. "We should go," he said. "We can't rest for long, not yet."

"That sounds ominous," Zenith said. She stood and stretched, already dreading the coming walk. "What about your flail? We going back for it?"

Apollyon shook his head. "No," he said. "The armies of Mephistopheles will continue to pursue me and now you. We need to put some distance between ourselves and my entry point into this plane so we can't be tracked so easily."

Zenith stared after Apollyon as he began to walk away. Apollyon set a brisk pace going left, or as her map told her, east.

"Fuck," she said as she scrambled after him. "I thought you lost them when I summoned you! I distinctly remember you shouting about it when you stepped through your little portal thing."

He flushed a little. "Greater demons like me, Mephistopheles, and his generals can't enter the Material Plane without help, but the lesser demons that make up the bulk of his armies are still capable of pursuing us," he explained. "Likely, Mephistopheles will send a scouting party after us first and it'll be in our best interests not to be seen. Even if we catch them and kill them before they can report our location, their absence will only indicate where we are for reinforcements to attack."

'I wish someone would explain what the fucking Material Plane actually is," she thought.

> Would you like to learn more about the Material Plane?
> 
> Yes | No

She quickly hit yes.

> You've accepted the Quest: **Navigating the Multiverse!**
> 
> Rewards: 420 XP

'Oh,' she thought. 'I don't like the look of that. That is way too much XP.'

She dismissed the notification, deciding to look over the quest later, after she got some sleep. Tomorrow's Zenith could deal with that headache. She turned back to Apollyon. She asked, "How big are scouting parties?" She decided that for now, she was ignoring the casual mention of murder. "And what would the reinforcements look like?"

> Would you like to learn more about battlefield tactics?
> 
> Yes | No

She swiped away the notification idly, then immediately regretted it. Yes, she did want to learn battlefield tactics! 'Quest, come back!' she thought. The quest did not come back. 'Well,' she thought ponderously. 'I learned that quests are a one-time commodity. Good to know. Would have been better to know before I dismissed such a useful one, but it could be worse.'

"Usually scouting parties are no larger than 5 demons," Apollyon said, "those better suited to stealth and sabotage than open battle, but the reinforcements would be heavy hitters, as powerful as he could send into the Material Plane."

"So, what I'm hearing is we have a chance of surviving the first wave, but the second wave would kill us," she surmised. 'Like that, that's worse,' she thought. 'Fuck, this is gonna suck.'

"Exactly," Apollyon agreed. He gave her a deadpan look. "This is especially true now that I have no weapon."

Zenith rolled her eyes and opened her HUD to her inventory. She asked, "You want daggers, a greatclub or a crossbow?"

"Give me the club," he said. "Please," he added belatedly.

She reached into her inventory and pulled out the greatclub. She handed it to Apollyon, and he examined it. It was a sturdy hunk of dark brown wood about 3 feet long and six inches round at its widest part with a simple leather grip and a sharp point on one side of its head. It was a reliable looking club, as far as Zenith could tell, but it was definitely incongruous with the rest of Apollyon's look, with his tarnished black plate armor and pointy fingered gauntlets. She would bet good money that when he had a helm it had some kind of spiky crown. He seemed happy enough with the club though as he strapped it to his back.

"Thank you," he said a little awkwardly, like he wasn't used to being polite.

"Yeah, well," she said with a shrug. "It's my fault you don't have your flail anymore."

"That's true," he agreed readily. She rolled her eyes but let the matter drop.

"Hey," she said. "Do you think it's your turn to carry me now?"

He didn't reply.

They kept walking through the night and into the next morning, pausing every so often to drink water and snack on some of Apollyon's dwindling rations: a mix of nuts, dried fruits, and hardtack. 'Huh,' she thought the first time she bit into a hardtack biscuit. 'It's like the world's shittiest saltine.' Occasionally conversation would crop up, but for the most part, Apollyon and Zenith were both content to walk in silence.

"So, were you born here, or did you get kidnapped by S.P.A.W.N. too?" Zenith asked as dawn broke. Zenith was ready to drop to the ground and never get up again. Every time they took a break it got harder and harder to keep walking. Thankfully, it seemed like Apollyon was slowing down too.

Apollyon snorted. "I was kidnapped nearly 500 years ago, in 2012 Earth-time," he said. "You'll find that most people were originally from Earth."

"Huh," Zenith said. "Time must be doing weird things because it was 2015 yesterday when I came through."

"Really?" he asked.

"Yeah, you didn't miss much my dude," she said. "Has anyone ever managed to get back? I mean, obviously instant transportation across dimensions is possible, so."

"S.P.A.W.N. has the DC set so high for going back to Earth, it may as well be impossible," Apollyon said with the voice of one who had tried and failed to do exactly that.

Zenith hummed curiously, but a glare from Apollyon told her that topic of conversation was closed. Silence ensued. Then, Apollyon peered into the distance, his head tilted to the side and his brow furrowed. He opened his mouth and tasted the air.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she asked. She tried mimicking him, her eyes squinting, her head tilted just so to the side, and her mouth open tasting the air like a snake.

"I'm," he started to say as he turned to look at her. "What are you doing? Stop that, you look like a moron."

"What? I'm just doing what you were doing!" she said. 'And you looked like a moron too,' she thought.

He shook his head. "I was performing a Survival check, looking for water. You were trying to make out with the air."

"Oh," she said, too curious to be embarrassed. 'Why'd you have to taste the air to do that?' she wondered but didn't ask. Apollyon obviously had an aesthetic going on and she'd bet good money that was just part of it. "How'd you do that?" she asked.

"How do you," he started to say. "Didn't you do the tutorial?"

"Yeah, that wasn't helpful. At all," she said.

Apollyon ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. She really wanted to touch it. "Look," he said, "you just, you think about what you want to do and then S.P.A.W.N. takes care of the rest."

Zenith nodded, once again ignoring her impulse to run her fingers through the flames in his hair, and looked in the direction Apollyon had been searching, this time deliberately looking for water.

> You've failed a Survival check!

"Dammit," she said as the notification disappeared.

"Failed?" he asked, a little surprised.

"Yes," she said. "Never mind, fuck it, where's the water? You found some, right?"

"Yes," he said. "About half a mile that way." He pointed a few degrees to the right.

"You could taste water from half a mile away?" she asked incredulously. 'What the fuck,' she thought.

"There's an oasis," he said, like that explained anything. "I'm surprised you didn't find it yourself."

"Thanks," Zenith said sarcastically.

"This is good," Apollyon said, ignoring her. "This is very good. I expected us to have to go without water for days, maybe even go up a few levels in exhaustion."

"And in a climate like this, there's bound to be a village by the water right?" Zenith asked.

"Exactly," he agreed. "They wouldn't let a resource like that go to waste. We can get supplies there before we keep going."

"Fuck yeah," Zenith said. She really didn't want to die of thirst. Her throat felt like fucking sandpaper every time she swallowed. She'd do just about anything for an unrationed drink right now. 'And maybe we'll find a map,' she thought, 'and I can get started on that Intrepid Explorer quest.'

"We're going to survive this," Apollyon said with a manic grin.

"What, you thought we were gonna die?" she said. Apollyon put his hand up, palm down and shoot it back and forth in a maybe motion. 

"Eh," he said.

Zenith rolled her eyes.


	3. Pillage?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Zenith and Apollyon embark on a grand quest.

"Come on, if we stop now, I'm gonna fall asleep, then I really will die," Zenith said. "Let's go."

Apollyon nodded and they started walking again. Soon enough they could see the sparkle of water in the sunlight, green vegetation, and the sand giving way to rough stone. As they got closer, Apollyon encouraged Zenith to try a Perception check.

"It's just a good habit to get into as you approach anything new," he explained. "This world is violent."

"Violent?" she repeated. "Have you even been to the Material Plane before?"

Apollyon shrugged. "No, but I doubt it's any better than the Nine Hells were. People are people no matter what and people are vicious when they're put into situations like these."

"Well, I don't disagree with you, but you were living in a place called the Nine Hells for 500 fucking years, so your perspective on what's normal is probably shot to hell. Maybe the Material Plane is different."

Apollyon snorted.

"Hey, it could be," she said. She shook her head and refocused. "So, Perception check. I just, what? Think I want to see something?"

Apollyon waved his hand back and forth, palm down in the air. “Sorta,” he said. “It’s not just sight, it’s all of your senses. It’s not unlike what you did when you looked for water. Just examine your surroundings with intent. Look for ambushes, animal tracks, listen for voices, smell for smoke. It’s easy once you get used to it.”

Zenith said, “Uh huh, sure.” Still, she gamely turned her attention to their surroundings and started examining them with intent, just like he said. ‘Are there animals?’ she thought. ‘An ambush? Who’s at the oasis?’

> Your Perception check was successful!

There! She saw movement. There was a lone figure hidden partially behind a large ruddy brown rock under a textured beige tarp made to mimic the sand beneath them.

She immediately turned to Apollyon.

“There’s someone there,” she said, pointing to the figure. Apollyon looked and immediately dropped to the ground and dragged her down beside him.

“Okay, that’s not good,” he said. “You see their set up?”

Zenith nodded.

“That’s a lookout. Now, they could just be travelers or some kind of village watchman, but –“

“But, where’s the village?” Zenith finished. “We should be able to see it by now. I mean the oasis is right fucking there.”

“Exactly, something’s going on.”

“But we need water,” Zenith said, starting to stand up. She was too thirsty for this cloak and dagger bullshit.

“Wait!” he said. “Wait.”

“What?” she snapped, kneeling in the sand. “Look, between the two of us we have enough fucking charisma to drown a fucking fish okay? We can talk our way past that mook and into the water supply then leave okay? Okay. Great plan. Let’s go.” She got up off her knees and starting to take a step forward.

Apollyon grabbed onto her ankle and dragged her back down. “Motherfucker!” she shouted, surprised by the sudden fall. Apollyon shushed her.

“I said wait, okay? First off, I can only speak Infernal, so talking our way out of shit is not going to work, ok? You don’t think they’ll be a little suspicious of the man with flames in his hair speaking the language of demons?”

Zenith winced in agreement. ‘Yeah,’ she thought, ‘yeah that’s really suspicious.’

“Second,” Apollyon continued, “we don’t know how many there are. If they outnumber us by too much and they aren’t friendly, we’re in trouble. You’ve never been in a fight before, right?”

“Well, not like this but –“

“No! Listen, that first fight sucks, and you don’t want that first fight to happen when you’re vastly outnumbered and have exhaustion, so just stop. We’re going to sneak in, alright? Sneak in, steal water, and leave,” he said.

Suddenly a shadow fell over them.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” said a man with a prominent birthmark on the right side of his jaw. Now, it could be a fish, but, honestly Zenith’s first thought was something very different.

“Dude, who drew a dick on your face?” she asked, switching languages into what she assumed must be Common. It was whatever that man had been speaking anyway. ‘I should not have said that,’ she immediately thought.

The man scowled, the hand that wasn’t holding a dagger coming up to cover the mark. “No one, you jackass! It’s a birthmark, a birthmark! And it’s not a dick, it’s a fish!” The man visibly reigned himself in and said, “Never mind! You two, disarm and toss your weapons to the right. Now!” He gestured violently to the right and brandished his dagger at them.

‘What is he gonna do with that?’ Zenith thought. ‘Scrape it across Apollyon’s armor?’

“I said, toss your weapons to the right, now!” Dickface repeated, taking a menacing step forward to tower over Zenith laying prone in the sand.

Zenith opened her mouth to argue, while Apollyon closed his eyes in resignation. Then he leapt to his feet and punched the man in the head. For an instant, there was a health bar hovering on the leftmost edge of her HUD and below it a purple bar of what Zenith could only assume was mana, followed by a second set of bars. They were labeled “Zenith” and “Apollyon the Destroyer.” There was a loud meaty smack as the man’s skull met Apollyon’s gauntleted fist. It connected with his left temple and Dickface dropped like a marionette with the strings cut, bleeding heavily. The health bars disappeared after a moment of stillness. Apparently once combat was concluded the health bars just fucked on out of there.

“What the fuck?” Zenith yelled, putting aside all thought of health bars in favor of more important things. “Shit, is he dead?”

“Why’d you have to pick a fight?” Apollyon asked.

“I didn’t pick a fight! I just asked who drew a dick on his face. He said it was a birthmark! You didn’t have to attack him!” Zenith shouted. “I thought you didn’t want to fight anyone!”

“I don’t! And he’s not dead, we would have gotten experience if he died,” Apollyon said.

“What the fuck, we get experience for killing people!” she shouted.

Apollyon rolled his eyes. “Calm down, he’s alive, and he’ll stay that way,” Apollyon said. “Probably.”

“Probably?” Zenith said.

“Probably,” Apollyon said. “Now stop freaking out and let’s go. Time for Plan B.”

“Go? Go where?”

Apollyon picked up the man with the dick on his face and threw him over his shoulder. “Grab his dagger. It might be useful later.”

Zenith picked up the dagger on autopilot and followed Apollyon as he quickly made his way to the lookout’s alcove. He put the unconscious man down on the ground quietly and crouched to peak around the rocks. Zenith, still holding the dagger, quickly copied him. Beyond the rocks was the spring, surrounded by tall grasses, some dense undergrowth, and a few trees in groups of two and three. The spring itself was a decent size, about twice the size of her old living room, with clear water. On the far side of the spring, protected on three sides by rocks and partially hidden by vegetation, were a handful of small buildings.

“Is that a village?” Zenith asked.

“No,” Apollyon said. “That’s an outpost.”

“Okay,” she said. ‘That sounds bad,’ she thought. “And what does that mean for us? Cause if we just picked a fight with the military of whatever fucking country we’re in then I say we run for it.”

Apollyon peered closer at the buildings, but they were too obscured to really make out any distinguishing features. They were mostly small, with one longer than the rest and another that was taller than the others set in the back between the other buildings. There were only 5 buildings in all.

“I can’t see any flags,” he said. “I don’t think they’re military.” He moved away from the edge of the rock, further into the shadows underneath the tarp. There was a small table and a chair set up in the back corner of the tarp, deepest in the shade with the clearest view of the desert beyond the oasis. The table was empty but for a small bag of trail mix and a waterskin.

Zenith walked over and picked up the waterskin. She sniffed it. ‘Smells fine,’ she thought. She laid the dagger on the table and took a large drink of the waterskin. She relished the cool water flowing all the way down her throat into her stomach. ‘God, I’m dehydrated,’ she thought. Apollyon was munching on the trail mix as he looked down at the dickfaced man contemplatively. He put his hand on the handle of her greatclub, tensing and releasing his grip. He hummed thoughtfully. Seeing that expression of cold calculation on his face, Zenith raced to come up with a plan that didn’t involve cold-blooded murder.

“So, hey,” she said, fully prepared to talk out of her ass. “I have an idea.”

Apollyon looked at her, quickly abandoning his contemplation of Dickface. “Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, screaming internally. “So, this worked out pretty well, right? Us causing a ruckus and them coming to investigate right?”

Apollyon waved his hand back and forth in that maybe motion that Zenith had become familiar with. “Eh,” he said. “We’re closer to the water, we have some more food, and you have a waterskin.”

‘Is he agreeing or disagreeing?’ she wondered. “Yeah, so, here’s my plan. We wait for the next lookout or whatever to come relieve this guy and we knock them out, steal their clothes so we can impersonate them, then we sneak into their outpost and steal supplies.”

‘That’s actually not a bad plan,’ she thought happily.

“Then we set it on fire behind us so they’re too busy trying to save their outpost and won’t chase us,” she added. ‘What the fuck brain? We were doing so well too,’ she thought. ‘Though I guess they might not chase us if they want to save their shit. Eh, it’s only a little vandalism. In the grand scheme of things that’s probably pretty minor. Besides, fire is very pretty.’ She looked at Apollyon’s hair surreptitiously.

Apollyon looked at her appraisingly and smiled a sinister smile. ‘The joy’s in his eyes,’ Zenith thought looking at the way the corners of his eyes crinkled in genuine pleasure. She grinned back full of teeth.

“That is an excellent idea,” Apollyon said.

> Would you like to raid the outpost?
> 
> Yes | No

Zenith hit yes.

> You've accepted the Quest: **Pillage?**
> 
> Rewards: 575 XP

Apollyon sat down on the ground, leaning against the rock and facing out towards the desert. Zenith angled the chair, so she’d see anyone coming from the direction of the outpost before they saw her and sat down in it. ‘Thank god we can finally rest,’ she thought. Walking during the night hadn’t been so bad, a little cold, but not bad. Then the sun rose, and they’d kept walking with it beating down on them. She could feel herself baking as they’d walked, a little crispier with every step. The glare from the sun on the sand burning light into her retinas had left white spots in her vision even now. She’d never been so grateful for shade in her life. ‘Fuck the sun, seriously,’ she thought. She eyed her new quest and tapped it. ‘With xp like that,’ she thought, ‘this is bound to be a shitshow and what the fuck was up with the name?’ She was suddenly less confident in her plan.

> **Pillage?**
> 
> _Neutralize the next denizen of the outpost you see._
> 
> _(Optional) Sneak pas the denizens of the outpost unseen. 0/?_
> 
> _Steal 10 jugs of water. 0/10_
> 
> _Steal 10-days worth of rations. 0/10_
> 
> _Set fire to the outpost._
> 
> _Escape alive._
> 
> Rewards: 575 XP

Zenith hummed in thought as she dismissed the quest blurb. Apollyon looked at her questioningly.

“New quest,” she explained. He nodded. “Hey, did you get this quest too?” she asked.

“Pillage?” he asked.

She nodded. “Will we get twice the xp for this because we’re both completing it? You know, since we’re in a party?”

“No,” he said. “One of the conditions of completing the quest is neutralizing the next opponent we see, so if we both see the same opponent, and we will, then one of us has to fail this quest.”

‘That’s bullshit,’ Zenith thought. “That’s fucking stupid,” she said. “I feel cheated.”

Apollyon snorted. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s a common attitude when it comes to S.P.A.W.N.”

They settled in to wait, both lightly dozing as time passed. Dickface didn’t wake up, but Zenith was reassured that she hadn’t gotten any experience, so he was still alive and that was good enough for her. She wasn’t ready to be an accomplice to murder just yet.

The first hour passed and Zenith felt better than she had, still tired but not like she would drop dead if she had to take another step. She tapped Exhaustion Level 1 where it was still parked on her HUD in the bottom left corner.

> You have disadvantage on all future ability checks until Exhaustion Level 1 has been resolved.

‘Okay,’ she thought. ‘Obviously, just resting isn’t enough to get rid of exhaustion, but what else am I supposed to do? Do I need to sleep?’

She tapped on the word resolve, just to see if it would explain any more.

> To **resolve** an Exhaustion Level, you must have a full night's rest after consuming a full meal.

‘Well, damn,’ she thought. ‘That’s not happening any time soon.’ She turned her attention to other things.

“When should the lookout change?” she asked as she fiddled with the dagger still laid on the table beside her. It was a nice dagger. It was balanced and well-maintained, identical to the two strapped to her waist but for the color of the grip which was a deep blue. Hers were red.

“Soon,” Apollyon said. He stood up and moved positions so that he was just out of sight of anyone coming from the outpost. He leaned against the rock. Another hour passed.

“Maybe we should go check it out?” Zenith said. “It’s been too long for one guy to be on watch, right?”

Apollyon shook his head. “It just means there are fewer people here than we suspected. There are 20 hours in a day –“

“There are?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “There are 20 hours in a day, and he’s been on watch for at least two hours, but probably longer.”

“But we don’t know how long they like to make their watches,” she said.

Apollyon sighed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Zenith cut him off.

“No, seriously, listen. We don’t know how long they like to keep watch and we don’t know how long he’s been on watch, not really,” she said.

“There are absolutely less than 10 people here,” Apollyon insisted. “Probably only five or six, otherwise he’d have someone on watch with him if his shift is longer than two hours.”

“Uh huh, sure,” Zenith said. Apollyon took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. He opened his mouth to speak again when suddenly he went still and tilted his head to the side.

Zenith, recognizing that pose from his Survival check, immediately thought, ‘What’s out there? What’s coming? Is something coming?’ She listened intently.

> Your Perception check was successful.

There, footsteps. ‘Wow,’ she thought. ‘That’s actually really cool.’ The notification disappeared as she looked at Apollyon. He held a finger up to his lips and motioned her to move to his side.

Zenith quickly stored the blue handled dagger in her inventory. She was already leery of using the two she had strapped to her waist. With her inventory opened, her eyes caught on The Names of Demons and she hummed contemplatively. Apollyon made hurrying motions with his hand and she impulsively grabbed the book out of her inventory and hurried over to stand next to Apollyon.

‘Afterall,’ Zenith rationalized, thinking fondly of the number of times she’d beaned some dumbass in the head with a book over the course of her life. ‘I’m most familiar with using books as weapons. So, this is really for the best. Fuck, I hope this thing does decent damage.’ She kissed the cover of the book for good luck and immediately regretted it. ‘Ugh,’ she thought. ‘Should not have done that.’ The texture of The Names of Demons was firm and yielding like flesh, but cool to the touch and clammy, a little sticky too. It was unpleasant in her hands, but ignorable. Against her lips it was disgusting. Like kissing a raw chicken breast or something.

Just then, before Zenith could get really worked up about putting her lips on something so nasty, a man rounded the corner of the rock Apollyon and Zenith were hiding behind. He immediately broke into a run once he saw Dickface laying on the ground where they had left him.

“Meilil!” he cried as he knelt beside Dickface.

Zenith didn’t give herself time to think, she just launched herself forward to smack the man in the head with the spine of her book. In the split instant she made her decision to attack him, two green health bars popped up on the left side of her HUD, just on the peripheral of her vision. Below each of them was a purple bar. At a glance, Apollyon was missing more than a third of his health and though her bar was full, she knew she was much squishier.

She smacked the man in the head with her book. The book screamed, a high wailing scream, one of a person being tortured to death, that raised the hair on her arms and the back of her neck. The man screamed in response, falling over himself clutching his ears. He ended up on his back at Zenith’s feet, laying almost on top of Meilil.

“Sorry about this,” Zenith said hitting the man a second time. The book screamed again and the man fell mercifully unconscious. The health bars disappeared from her HUD, but not before she noticed her health bar suddenly gain six points that were blue instead of the usual green. ‘So that’s how that trait works,’ she thought remembering she gained hit points for every opponent she reduced to 0. Though, how the dude was alive without any health she didn’t understand. There must be some mechanic at play she was never told about. She’d ask Apollyon later.

Zenith stood still for a moment and behind her Apollyon stared at both her and her monstrous book with something approaching respect but much closer to horror in his eyes.

‘Yeah, I’m scared too,’ Zenith thought as she examined The Names of Demons. “This book has gotta be cursed,” she said.

“Yes,” Apollyon said. “That thing hit me. Did you know it would do psychic damage? I had to pass a Constitution saving throw to avoid even half the psychic damage it did.”

“Is that what it did?” she replied, ignoring that bit about friendly fire.

“Yeah,” he said befuddled, “yeah that’s what it did. So, you didn’t know. You just decided that hitting him with a book that is absolutely cursed was the best way to put him down. Not your daggers, not that crossbow you said you had, not me with your greatclub, but you hitting him with that book.”

“It worked out pretty well,” Zenith defended. Apollyon looked like he wanted to argue on principle but couldn’t disagree because it actually had worked.

Suddenly, Apollyon’s head snapped to the side and he started moving past the rocks and into the vegetation beyond. “Hurry,” he said, “more are coming. Probably drawn here by that thing’s scream.”

Zenith thought, ‘They must be brave, running towards a scream that sounds like that.’ She scurried after Apollyon and they hid as best they could. They began creeping further away from their victims and closer to the outpost, keeping to the undergrowth as much as possible. Apollyon’s armor made clanking sounds with every step that Zenith hadn’t noticed until that very moment. She had the sudden realization that he was going to get them caught just as two human women both in heavy armor ran past them towards their unconscious comrades.

Zenith stopped moving when they heard a woman say, “Wait, Atala, I hear something. This way!”

Apollyon turned and the health bars popped up again. He charged the woman who had spoken. She was definitely human, with dark skin and hair. She carried a halberd like the other woman, Atala, who was rushing towards Zenith with intent.

“Oh fuck!” Zenith shouted as Atala swung her halberd in an artful circle that nearly cut her head off. ‘I am going to die, holy fuck!’ she thought as the halberd glanced off her side, gouging her armor. Her health bar lost one of the blue hit points. ‘Huh,’ she thought. ‘I didn’t feel that.’

Atala took another swing that just barely missed cutting off her right arm and Zenith had enough. She stopped dancing backward and ran as fast as she could, which was much faster than she expected, inside of the woman’s guard, bodily knocking the halberd aside. Zenith took The Names of Demons in both hands and smacked the woman in the face with the back cover. Atala dropped to the ground unconscious and bleeding from a broken nose.

“Will you stop that already!” Apollyon yelled. “You keep hitting me!”

“Sorry,” Zenith said, as she turned Atala over onto her side so she wouldn’t drown in her own blood, picked up the woman’s halberd, and looked over at Apollyon. He was having trouble landing a hit, but his opponent’s halberd was broken, the blade laying on the ground a few feet away.

“Just hit her already!” Zenith shouted.

“You don’t think I’m trying?” Apollyon yelled back. “If your cursed book hadn’t screamed at me like that I would’ve killed her already!”

The woman, distracted by their exchange, stumbled and Apollyon finally landed a solid blow to her ribs. The snap-crunch of breaking bone echoed against the rocks as she crumpled to the ground. She didn’t get up again. ‘Fuck,’ Zenith thought for a split second before she remembered they’d get experience for killing their opponents. ‘Oh, good, she’s still alive. Wow, that scared me there for a second.’

Zenith eyed her own and Apollyon’s health bars before they disappeared again. Apollyon was at 100 health and she had 12 of the green hit points and 11 of the blue, which she guessed were temporary hit points or something that she gained from that one trait of hers. They seemed to work as some kind of shield, whatever they were. She wondered, ‘Shit, how many of his hit points did Apollyon lose because of me?’

“Hey, so, sorry about the friendly fire shit,” Zenith said into the silence that fell after their skirmish. She didn’t wait for a reply before she went on to ask, “So, how do you use traits and features and spells and shit?”

Apollyon heaved a great, aggrieved sigh and scrubbed his hand through his hair and down his face. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then looked up at her exasperated. “You say the spell. Sometimes you need to use a gesture or something to control it and some spells are actually rituals that need a lot of prep time and components, but you always have to say its name,” Apollyon explained. “And feats, it depends. The passive feats are always on, so to speak, but the active ones act like spells. Say their name and gesture and they’ll work.”

“Huh,” she said. She opened her grimoire and eyed her spells, committing their names to memory: Light, eldritch blast, minor illusion, arms of Hadar, hellish rebuke. ‘Really, really should have done this earlier,’ she thought as she opened her traits and feats menu and looked for the active ones. Healing hands and necrotic shroud were the only active traits she had. The rest were passive, and she couldn’t even use necrotic shroud yet.

“Come on,” Apollyon said. “Let’s go. At this point we may as well just walk in. I doubt there are too many more of these guys hanging around anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to think you were right about the number of people here,” Zenith agreed.

They forewent stealth as they approached the outpost, moving quickly and keeping their eyes peeled for any more opponents. Zenith absently swung the halberd she’d stolen back and forth. It was basically a big bladed stick. She liked the weight of the thing, but she was leery of using it because she didn’t want to hurt herself on something that needed actual skill to wield.

She asked Apollyon, “You know how to use this thing?”

He looked at the halberd and nodded. “I’m proficient with all weapons,” he said.

“Of course, you are,” she said. He shrugged unrepentantly. She hummed, “Want it?”

Apollyon reached out his hand for it, absently handing Zenith’s greatclub back to her. They traded and Apollyon took a few experimental swings. He grinned. Zenith put the greatclub back into her inventory. She was fine using her cursed book, only this time she’d stand a little farther away from Apollyon. Arms of Hadar worked on a proximity thing, so it was likely The Names of Demons did too. She just had to figure out how far away from Apollyon she had to stand to stop hitting him with the psychic damage from the book’s scream. ‘Easy,’ Zenith thought.

They came into a courtyard in front of the handful of buildings there at the oasis. Standing in the middle of the courtyard, an arrow notched on a longbow and pointed directly at Apollyon’s face, was a man with pointed ears, luminous amber eyes, and glossy brown hair. ‘An elf?’ she thought.

“What have you done to my party?” he demanded with a deadly calm.

Apollyon chuckled. It was a deep, sinister laugh that visibly disquieted the man. “Do you want us to tell you they’re alive?” Apollyon asked in a low, rasping voice. The man obviously had no idea what Apollyon had just said.

‘Oh,’ Zenith thought. ‘He’s intimidating him! Shit, I need to look mean, look mean! Ooh, no, look mad,’ Zenith thought. She fixed a too-full grin on her face and widened her eyes, trying to channel her inner Cheshire Cat. ‘Crazy eyes, crazy eyes, crazy eyes,’ she thought. ‘Give him the crazy eyes!’ She widened her eyes until the whites showed, tilted her head to the right just slightly and smiled as wide as she could.

The man gulped, looking between the two of them, both taller than him by at least a few inches, both thick with muscle and wearing armor that looked much less tattered than his own. “What are you? What do you want?” he asked again.

“Ask him if he heard them scream,” Apollyon said, still acting as though he were speaking to the man, his voice low with the promise of violence.

“Answer me!” the man said. He took a step back.

“Your party,” Zenith said in Common. “Didn’t you hear them scream?” The man took another step back, his bow lowering. She leaned forward, into his space and leered. “Do you want to know what their last moments were like?”

“Whatever you said, keep going,” Apollyon hissed, his voice becoming sibilant. The man started to turn away from them. “He’s almost scared enough to run, just a little more.”

“Run,” Zenith said, really getting into character now. “Run so we can chase you!”

> Your Intimidation check was successful!

The man ran behind the buildings, presumably to a bolt hole or a hiding place, Zenith didn’t care which. She just wanted that sweet, sweet water, some food, and to finish this quest already. She turned to Apollyon to give him a high five and startled to see his eyes had slit pupils, his tongue was a vibrant blue and was forked at the tip, flicking in and out of his lips like a snake. The flames in his hair and eyebrows were burning brighter, giving off actual heat now and casting his face into shadow, making his eyes seem to glow with an inner fire.

“Holy fuck,” she said, her hand still hanging in the air. “That’s fucking cool! How’d you do that? Is this what you normally look like or just a light show?”

“Does it matter?” he asked, absently slapping his palm to hers. His form shifted again as he spoke going back to the uncany beauty and softly burning flames of before. He was a little disturbing to look at no matter which form he took.

“Fuck,” Zenith said. “That is so cool. I hope my necrotic shroud thing is like that.”

Apollyon ignored her and started walking towards one of the smaller buildings. Zenith wandered over to the low, long one and found an empty stable. Apollyon peaked his head into a building and then came back out, doing the same to two others before he called Zenith over.

“Found their storage,” he said from inside the building. The building was a squat, round thing. Zenith thought it was made of mud bricks, judging by the color and texture of the building. Inside it was cool and there were crates and jugs and chests all stacked neatly in concentric rings around a series of aisles. “Take the water and the food we need for that quest,” Apollyon said as he turned and started breaking open chests. They were full of fine statues and jewelry when Zenith took a look, and she left him to sift through it all. She began to pile as much food and water into her inventory as she could hold. Fuck that ten of each bullshit.

“Hey, does stuff spoil in our inventories?” she asked. As she shoved another handful of ration bags into her inventory, topping it up at 20. She had 15 ten-pound jugs of water and 20 two-pound bags of rations. She was feeling pretty confident about going forward.

“No,” Apollyon said. He was loading up one of the small chests with a bunch of the statues. If she had to guess she’d say the ones carved to look like people were made of bone, but the others, the ones of chimeras of all kinds, those were probably carved out of ivory.

“What, exactly, are you doing with all those statues?” she asked. “It’s not like we have a fence we can use. What the fuck are you gonna do? Hold onto them until we have a guy to unload them on? At least take the jewelry if you’re looting. We can pawn that shit a hell of a lot easier than statues.”

Apollyon flushed. He didn’t stop loading up the chest though. The statues were small, maybe 7 inches tall and three wide, though there was a lot of variation in the chimeras. He was really shoving ‘em into that chest too. He had to have at least 20 of the bone statuettes and maybe 15 of the ivory chimeras. He held another chimera in his hand, this one with the head of a camel and a moose, the body of some kind of canine, and the tail of lion. He took out a different chimera, this one with the heads of a baboon and an orangutan, the body of a rhino, and the tail of a whale. He examined them both side by side before reluctantly setting the camel chimera aside and placing the other back into the chest. He shut the chest, put it in his inventory and thoroughly ignored Zenith’s questioning stare.

“What, you’re not even gonna acknowledge my very valid points?” she asked.

“They aren’t valid, because I’m not selling these,” he said. He got up and walked out of the building. Zenith followed him.

“You an art collector or something?” she asked. “That’s nice, that’s cool. Still doesn’t explain why you’re gonna haul a hundred pounds worth of artefacts with us while we run away from an army of demons.”

Apollyon kept walking, past the buildings he’d already checked and deemed useless, past the stables, and towards the tall building in the back.

“We could be using that inventory space for food and water or actual loot that we can use to purchase things like food and water and rooms at, at inns or whatever they have here,” Zenith complained as they walked away from the building and toward the tallest of the buildings there.

“Uh huh,” Apollyon said. “I’m keeping them. You’re the one without even the barest necessities for traveling.”

“Yeah, and I am going to rectify that now,” she said. “And on that note, what the fuck am I looking for?”

They went through the building room by room, rifling through everything. Apollyon found a lot of correspondence he couldn’t read, signed with what looked like noblemen’s sigils. He pocketed a few to have Zenith take a look at later and grabbed another handful to tear into strips for kindling. Zenith busied herself with collecting personal affects such as a bedroll, a pillow, a tinderbox, and a length of rope. The pillow wasn’t on Apollyon’s list of necessities, but it was on her list of necessities. She wasn’t an animal. She also spent a lot of time tearing the women’s rooms apart looking for a bag of feminine products, just in case. She had no idea what being generated actually did to her body or if she even had a cycle anymore but fuck if she wasn’t gonna prepare for that shit. She eventually found two in the bathroom on the ground floor. She took them both. ‘We’re burning the place down,’ Zenith justified. ‘Not like they’re gonna be able to use them after that anyway.’

Finally, Apollyon and Zenith reconvened just outside the door of the building. Apollyon had spent the better part of the last half hour moving the most flammable things he could find on the ground floor to the door. He handed Zenith some kindling and asked, “You know how to light a fire, right?”

“Bitch, of course I can light a fire,” she said. She pulled out her new tinderbox, a round palm-sized brass box with a compass rose etched into its face, and opened it, pulling out a hunk of flint and some fire steel. ‘All those post-apocalyptic books I read have to be good for something,’ she thought. She took the kindling Apollyon had gotten for her, a nice handful of parchment torn into strips, and knelt on the ground. She put the kindling on the seat of a wooden chair that Apollyon had moved into the doorway and started striking her steel against her flint in a downwards motion so the sparks would carry towards the kindling. Three strikes later and she had fire. She carefully blew on it, encouraging it to grow, and then got up and backed away. She waited for a moment to see if it would go out, but it seemed content to eat away at the wooden chair and eventually it caught onto the doorway. The building began to burn.

She cackled. “Ha!” she said. “Told you I could do it!”

“You’ve never done that before in your life,” Apollyon said.

“Not once,” she agreed with a happy smile. They waited until they were sure the fire wouldn’t snuff itself out then they left. When they’d gotten a fair distance from the oasis a notification popped up on Zenith’s HUD.

> Congratulations! You've completed the Quest: Pillage?
> 
> Rewards: 575 XP...

“So,” Zenith said as she dismissed the notification, “that was way easier than I thought it was gonna be.”

> Level Up!

“They were already injured when we attacked,” Apollyon said.

“What? No,” she said, distracted by her HUD screen and the level up notification. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “You saw the state of their armor, didn’t you?”

“Um,” Zenith said. She had been too busy riding the adrenaline of a near death experience to recall what all she’d noticed at the time. “Fuck, now I just feel like a bully,” she complained. “Like, how badly hurt? Are we gonna get notifications that we’ve killed those guys in few hours?”

“Maybe,” Apollyon said unconcerned. He was interacting with his HUD and barely paying the conversation any attention, which normally would piss Zenith the fuck off, but she was also pretty eager to level up. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Okay, sure, don’t worry,” she said. ‘Fuck, I’m worried,’ she thought. ‘Think about something else.’

“How do level ups work?” she asked. She clicked the notification.

> You’ve leveled up! Choose your class:  
> Barbarian (0)  
> Bard (0)  
> Cleric (0)  
> Druid (0)  
> Fighter (0)  
> Monk (0)  
> Paladin (0)  
> Ranger (0)  
> Rogue (0)  
> Sorcerer (0)  
> Warlock (1)  
> Wizard (0)

Apollyon said, “Level ups work like the tutorial, only with fewer explanations.”

“Uh huh,” Zenith said distractedly. “Wait, we can multiclass?” She hovered her finger over the classes, reading their blurbs as they popped up. She paid especially close attention to the barbarian.

“Nothing’s stopping you,” Apollyon said.

“Hmm,” she said. “Are you multiclassed?”

“No,” he said. “I’m going to be an Eldritch Knight. It’s a fighter archetype that can cast spells from the wizard’s spellbook.”

“Cool,” Zenith said absently. “When do you select an archetype?” She hovered her finger over the barbarian’s description for a few more seconds before she gave into the inevitable and selected warlock. ‘Later,’ she thought.

“Most of the classes do that at level 3,” Apollyon said. “But warlocks have an archetype as soon as they agree to the Pact.”

“So, I already chose to be a, what Demon Summoner?” Zenith asked.

> At level 2, you may now choose 2 Eldritch Invocations from the provided list:  
> Agonizing Blast  
> Armor of Shadows  
> Beast Speech  
> Beguiling Influence  
> Devil’s Sight  
> Eldritch Sight  
> Eldritch Spear  
> Eyes of the Rune Keeper  
> Fiendish Vigor  
> Gaze of Two Minds  
> Mask of Many Faces  
> Misty Visions  
> Repelling Blast  
> Thief of Five Fates

“Ooh,” she said. ‘Eyes of the rune keeper looks like fun,’ she thought. She tapped on it.

“You made a Pact with a Fiend, but I guess if you want to call yourself a demon summoner you can,” he said. “You did summon me.”

Zenith laughed, then turned her attention back to her HUD.

> **Eyes of the Rune Keeper  
> ** You can read all writing.  
> Select Eyes of the Rune Keeper?  
> Yes | No

‘Yes, please,’ she thought as she hit yes. Her HUD returned to the list of invocations. She hit agonizing blast, because why not?

> **Agonizing Blast**  
>  When you cast eldritch blast, add your Charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit.  
> Select Agonizing Blast?  
> Yes | No

‘Good enough,’ she thought.

> Would you like to edit your Grimoire?
> 
> Yes | No

‘Nope, I’m good,’ she thought, selecting no.

> You are now Level 2!

‘Hell yeah, I am!’ she thought. “That,” she said, “was immensely satisfying. How close are we to level three?”

“Less than a hundred points,” Apollyon said.

“Fuck yeah,” she said. “That quest was an excellent idea. I mean, besides the maybe killing people part, it went off without a hitch!”

“It was a good idea,” he agreed. “Now we just need to lose the scouting party and we can get on with our lives.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t caught up to us yet if they’re as good as you say,” Zenith said.

“They are,” Apollyon defended. “And they’ll probably have advantage on their checks for the next 20 hours or so since we set that fire. They’ll suspect I was there.”

“What the fuck!” Zenith said. “Then why did we set shit on fire if that was your MO?”

Apollyon shrugged. “It was a good idea,” he said. “Besides, S.P.A.W.N. made it an integral part of the quest. If we wanted to get xp for any of that, we had to burn the outpost down.”

“That’s not it,” Zenith said. “Cause from where I’m standing a burning smoke signal that says, ‘Apollyon and Friend Were Here’ is not a good idea!”

Apollyon didn’t say anything, but now that she was on the lookout for suspicious shit there was definitely something weird in the way he kept turning to look back at the flames.

> Your Insight check was successful!

“Holy fuck,” she said. “You’re a genuine pyromaniac. I said fire and you literally could not help yourself.”

Apollyon didn’t say anything, but he did start walking faster.

“Huh,” Zenith said as she jogged to keep up with him. “Is there anything I need to know, about say, your coping methods?”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly, staring straight ahead.

“Yeah, sure,” she agreed. “But, seriously, do you need, I don’t know, controlled burning time every now and again, or, ooh, do you want to take up fire dancing? Do you know how to fire dance?”

Apollyon turned to stare her dead in the eyes. “Do you know how to fire dance?” he asked pointedly.

“What? No,” she said. “I wish. That’d be pretty cool. Maybe we should both learn. We’ll make everyone who joins our party learn how to fire dance. It’ll be a thing.”

“So now we’re expanding the party?” Apollyon asked. The tension in his shoulders relaxed a little as the topic of conversation moved away from his pyromania.

“Well,” Zenith answered after some thought. “I figure it’s pretty unlikely we spend the rest of our lives just the two of us on the run from Mephistopheles and the first step to fighting an army is probably raising an army, but short of raising an army, our first step should be gathering a squad of saboteurs and assassins. So, that’s my plan.”

“You know,” Apollyon said after a moment. “I’m really starting to love your plans.”

“It could use more fire I think,” she said. “I’ll even let you set it this time.”


End file.
